Lady Gagas digitale Intimität

Abstract

What’s Lady Gaga’s pop-aesthetic innovation? It is a newly established way of communication between star and recipient. Lady Gaga put her main focus on promoting her music and her staged self through the internet and Twitter as well as via PCs and smartphones. By using these technological means she involves her recipients in a communication of love. She stages an imaginary and intimate relationship with her fans. This is a shared goal of all her publications starting with her debut up to her album »Born This Way«. What form does this virtual intimacy take on? Lady Gaga together with her communication partners agree on having to overcome the (pop-cultural) idealisation of the romantic concept of love. In her videos she alludes to patterns and stereotypes of romantic love just to radically criticize this concept of love and its traditional ways of representing itself. Lady Gaga’s staging may look like Madonna’s, but she goes a step further. Whilst with Madonna love and sexuality are beyond criticism, Lady Gaga questions the very essence of these concepts. The common ground of the communication between star and fan is found in the abolishment of the fake promises of an individualized love. They agree on an imaginary pact to bypass the dangers of idealization and to develop their relationship beyond the pop-cultural agenda of love. This union has extensive consequences. Since the real communication of love in the shape of networks and forums has moved to the virtual space Lady Gaga’s self-staging is just as fictitious as the real relationships that start on the internet. The pop star exhausts the medium specific ways of orchestrating oneself and techniques of communication to an eccentric maximum. At the same time she defines the rules of communicating intimacy and love in the virtual space. Added on to this is a finding of sociologist Eva Illouz who demonstrated that fictitious emotions expressed in a virtual communication can have a more intensive impact than real emotions. In an extreme case the intimate communication with Lady Gaga would substitute for a loving relationship with a real partner.

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urn:nbn:de:hbz:6:3-20130513150526649-1779773-0